February 5, 2018

Strategic Dilemma: to Quad or not to Quad

India, like many other countries, is coming to terms with
China’s rise. This rise has been meteoric and in many ways beneficial to the
global economy. However, it has been accompanied by increasing military
assertiveness, as at the trijunction between India, Bhutan, and China at
Doklam. Under its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing provides state-backed
financing to countries in Eurasia and the Indian Ocean Region with political
and military strings attached. And China increasingly ignores established
international practices, contravening freedom of navigation and overflight in
the South China Sea, proliferating nuclear technologies to Pakistan, and
stealing intellectual property through cyberattacks. All these actions have led
to greater concern about how an increasingly powerful China will wield its
power.

One element of India’s response has been to deepen its
strategic relations with three other democratic maritime powers in the
Indo-Pacific region -- the United States, Japan, and Australia. This engagement
has usually been bilateral or trilateral in nature, encompassing both official
security dialogues and naval exercises. But the notion of all four countries
coming together has proved surprisingly controversial. This configuration –
India, US, Japan, and Australia – is widely referred to informally as the
“Quad.” The merits of the Quad have been hotly debated for over a decade.
Equally, there are many enduring misperceptions of what the Quad is, what it
might become, and what it is intended to accomplish.

In an earlier iteration, the Quad was actually two
things. One was a one-off dialogue held in Manila in May 2007 on the side lines
of the ASEAN Regional Forum featuring foreign ministry officials from the four
countries. The second was a single naval exercise held in September 2007 in the
Bay of Bengal – Malabar 07-02 – that featured the navies of the four countries
and Singapore and involved over 25 ships and 20,000 personnel. China responded
harshly to these developments, perceiving them as a form of containment. In
India, these moves were controversial and there were protests supported by the
Left parties. However, it was Australia that fatally pulled the plug, with the
government of former prime minister Kevin Rudd announcing in February 2008 that
it was no longer interested in such a formation.

Over the past decade, governments in all four countries
explored the possibility of reaching an accommodation with Beijing, sometimes
at the expense of a deeper strategic partnership with the other three
democratic powers. This applied to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-led
governments in Tokyo, the Rudd government in Canberra, and at times to both the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in New Delhi and the Barack Obama
administration in Washington. But rather than become more sensitive to these
countries’ concerns, Beijing responded with greater assertiveness, whether with
Japan in the East China Sea, with Southeast Asian states in the South China
Sea, or with India in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. In time, all four
governments began to acknowledge the limitations of engagement with Beijing and
sought alternatives to better manage China’s rise.

This is why the idea of the Quad has once again gained
momentum. In November 2017, officials from the four countries’ foreign
ministries met once again in Manila for what India’s Ministry of External
Affairs called “consultations on Indo-Pacific.” It is important to note a few
things about this revived initiative.

First, it was exploratory in nature. An exact
quadrilateral agenda still needs to be ironed out. The four countries must
still decide what can be accomplished that is not already being done
bilaterally or trilaterally. There are today much more evolved
US-Japan-Australia, US-Japan-India, and India-Japan-Australia dialogues. The
scope of the Quad is also contentious: India, for example, believes that a
discussion on developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan is necessary for a
holistic dialogue on the Indo-Pacific.

Second, the initiative is led by the foreign ministries,
rather than the defence ministries or military services. Subsequently, at the
Raisina Dialogue in January 2018 in New Delhi, the naval chiefs of all four
countries appeared together on a public panel discussion. But at this point,
quadrilateral cooperation remains consultative in nature, rather than operationally
collaborative.

Third, all four parties are still using the Quad as a
bargaining chip with Beijing. We will see, for example, Japan work towards a
thaw in relations with China this year, and the Quad strengthens its hand.
Therefore, all four parties must go into the Quad with eyes wide open. For all
these reasons, much of the commentary about the Quad requiring commitments on
the part of India or others, or evolving into a formal alliance, are off the
mark or very premature.

Moving forward, India should not be fixated on only this
four-pointed configuration as a means of deepening cooperation with like-minded
security partners in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad is not a sine qua non for
regional security. If, for example, more countries are to be invited to future
Malabar exercises (currently involving India, US, and Japan), it would make
just as much sense to involve an ASEAN member country such as Singapore or
Indonesia, as it would Australia. Still, the simple recognition that India, US,
Japan and Australia have shared concerns about China’s rise and assertiveness,
and together have the will and capability to define the security order in the
region, makes the Quad both valuable and necessary.